


Take it from the top.

by UmbreonGurl



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Gen, Major spoilers for all routes, Time Travel, no beta we die like Glenn, time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22257676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmbreonGurl/pseuds/UmbreonGurl
Summary: Every time that Byleth arrives at Garreg Mach Monastery, things go a bit differently.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Take it from the top.

The first time Byleth teaches at Garreg Mach Monastery, she chooses the Golden Deer. 

Everything goes relatively well until her father dies. She cries, cries like she never knew she was capable of, and slowly pulls herself back together in time for war to break out. She wakes up five years too late, and the world has continued on without her.

She watches as one by one former students die, some by her hand, some by her students’. Dimitri dies, Edelgard dies, and their victory is almost as hollow as she feels, paved upon the bodies of former friends and comrades. 

She doesn’t have enough time to process things, to really think about whether or not she is happy with the way things are, before she is forcibly brought back to where it all started once again, meeting three students in a forest.

The second time Byleth teaches at Garreg Mach Monastery, she chooses the Blue Lions, and she is a man.

Her sword form is clumsy, awkward even, and she has to relearn swordfighting alongside her students, clumsily adjusting to a longer reach and a higher center of gravity.

She is a stranger to those she once knew, and those who died once again walk among the living.

It takes all her self control not to cringe every time she sees Ferdinand, because she blinks and can still see his body shot full of arrows like a pincushion, long, flowing hair dyed in blood.

She can still hear his “I’ll never get to surpass Edelgard, after all, it seems,” as he wheezes out his last breath, can still hear Dorothea sobbing in the greenhouse. 

“We killed Ferdie, professor.”

This time, her class has only one archer.

She has to redesign her lesson plans to be suited for more lance users, and Claude no longer smiles at her from across the table and means it.

Dimitri, she knows, will end up the same man who quite literally marched to his own death if she is not careful.

She treads carefully around the Black Eagles.

By now, she knows war is coming. She does her best to stop it, but no amount of meetings over tea, shared meals, or seminars will stop Edelgard from yet again marching on Garreg Mach.

Father dies once again, despite her best efforts, and if anything, it hurts more this time, knowing it was coming and still being powerless to stop it.

The Dimitri she remembers at Gronder Field shows himself at the Holy Tomb, and this time, when she wakes up five years later, she is missing a student.

Dedue is gone, and with him goes another one of the people holding Dimitri from turning into the feral man she had seen the first time Gronder field, attacking anyone and anything in sight.

Much of the class walks on eggshells around him, and as a result she is yet again put in charge of the war effort, but this time, for a different side.

She wears blue instead of yellow, and no longer has a co-planner looking upon her plans with an easy smile.

Gilbert is not much help with battle plans, but he comes in handy for managing what is left of the Faerghus nobility.

Felix is understandably bitter, Ingrid is tired, Ashe is scared, and Sylvain tries to stay upbeat, but it is clear that the war is wearing on him too. Annette and Mercedes try to keep smiles on their faces, but it gets harder and harder when they are running out of food and supplies with every passing day. 

Rodrigue’s arrival is a breath of fresh air, and the supplies and men he brings with him are even more so.

The Great Bridge of Myrddin is a familiar battlefield. 

Dedue comes back, and Ferdinand yet again falls, but this time, Lorenz falls alongside him.

She had prepared for Ferdinand. She had not for Lorenz.

His death tramples her like a wild horse, and she barely has enough time to put herself back together again before she is at Gronder Field once more.

It is just as bloody as last time, and her futile hope of working together with the Golden Deer dies as soon as the battlefield becomes so chaotic it is hard to tell friend from foe.

This time, Dimitri does not lie dead, imperial spears in his back, but his drive to kill Edelgard is no less desperate.

Rodrigue's death, while unfortunate, provides an important wakeup call for Dimitri. She is sad, of course, but she does not weep for him the same way she does for the others. 

After his father’s death, Felix becomes even more standoffish than before, and even Sylvain, who normally is undeterred by it, seems to be a bit wary. 

But at a minimum, for the first time in a long time, Dimitri seems to realize that he can be more, _is_ more than the man he has been for the last five years.

Slowly, surely, bit by bit, piece by piece, with everyone’s help, they work on putting the broken pieces of Dimitri’s soul back together.

Hers still lies in pieces, haphazardly shoved together into something that resembles—but is not— whole.

And it all comes crashing down again when they march on Derdriu to answer Claude’s desperate plea for help.

She is elated, overjoyed, even, to speak with him again, to work together again, two out of three houses united, before he thanks them for their help and flies off on the back of his wyvern. 

They march on Enbarr, and Edelgard yet again refuses to back down.

This time, though, she is so desperate that she literally becomes the figurative monster many people claim her to be.

It is a long, tiring battle, but they get through it. Edelgard and Dimitri have one last chat, Edelgard stabs Dimitri, and the war is ended yet again.

Their victory is short lived, and soon after, Byleth finds herself back in that same forest once again.

The third time Byleth teaches at Garreg Mach Monastery, she chooses the Black Eagles, and is a woman once again.

Hubert threatens to murder her the first week of class, and she almost wants to laugh.

“You’ve tried to kill me many times before,” she wants to say. “It never worked.”

Instead, she simply invites him to try and continues on with her business.

Edelgard is an enigma. Byleth doesn’t know what to think of her, at first. 

This is not the same woman who started a war, this is not the same woman who stabbed Dimitri, this is a girl, not a woman.

A girl who works extremely hard (often so much so she doesn’t take care of herself), a girl who sneaks sweets on the sly, a girl who draws doodles of her classmates on the backs of her quizzes when she thinks nobody is looking.

Caspar is boisterous and full of life, always ready to go and eager to fight, and it saddens her to know that he never got the chance, last time, having fallen in the battle for Garreg Mach.

She keeps an extra close eye on him, and has to pull him out of harm’s way more than a few times, but it is more than worth it.

Linhardt sleeps through much of class, yet is also one of her best students. He, unlike Caspar, has no desire to run right into a fight, and in fact seems to despise fighting altogether. He died at Fort Merceus, on a battlefield he wanted to have no part in.

He and Caspar work well as a team, covering each other’s weak points, and Byleth hopes it will help.

She hopes, not knows, because unlike the last few times, she doesn’t know what to expect—not fully.

She knows that Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, knows what she will do, what she is _likely_ to do, but the Edelgard she knows now is far different from the Edelgard she knew before, and the Edelgard before that.

This time, Edelgard opens up to her, and Byleth finally gets a glimpse as to the reason why she was so desperate to fight, why she fought tooth and nail every time.

In the Holy Tomb, Byleth stands with Edelgard, instead of against her, and everything changes.

Former foes become allies, and former allies become foes.

Rhea quickly turns on Byleth with a rage she had not seen aimed at anyone but imperial soldiers, and as Garreg Mach crumbles around Byleth, some part of her can’t help but hope that this time she won’t wake up.

The world yet again keeps on turning without her in it, and she yet again wakes up to five years having passed.

This time, she does not have a hope of working together with the other houses. She does, however, hope that less people will die this time, with her there to help guide Edelgard’s decisions.

And just like last time, and the time before that, her hopes are torn to pieces and thrown into the fire.

Hilda dies at her hands. Leonie dies at Ferdinand’s. This time, the blood that dyes his hair is not his own.

She doesn’t see Marianne at all, and she doesn’t know whether it relieves or unsettles her.

Claude leaves with his tail between his legs, and even though he wishes her well, it is a far more bitter goodbye than last time’s. She can understand why it’d be hard for him to be cordial when the blood of his friends covers her hands.

They clash with Dimitri and Dedue on the Tailtean Plains, and sweet, loyal, kind Dedue uses a crest stone he was not made for and turns into a monster right before their very eyes.

Whatever tiny chance they may have had at negotiating with Dimitri dies with Dedue, and she is once again marching on Fhirdiad, but this time, under a different banner, with a different purpose.

By the time they finish taking down Rhea, she is exhausted.

Edelgard smiles at her, and she smiles back, and she welcomes the void that takes her back to the forest once more.

The fourth time Byleth teaches at Garreg Mach Monastery, she isn’t a professor. 

This time, her name is not Byleth, but Bylina.

It’s a small difference, a small, tiny difference, but it’s something that changed, a small variable that may or may not affect her overall outcome down the line.

Her father becomes the professor instead of her, and she becomes a teaching assistant, bouncing around all three houses to help where needed.

She gently guides Edelgard’s axe forms, adjusts Dimitri’s lance grip, and helps Claude with battlefield authority work.

Being Bylina changes much, but at the same time, it changes nothing at all.

Father still dies, the war still comes, people still die, and this time, she is one of them.

She is buried under the rubble of Garreg Mach, and this time, she does not wake up five years later.

She is so relieved to finally have an end to this, to finally be _done_ , when she finds herself in the forest for her fifth time.

She is so shocked, so confused, that she doesn’t even make it to Garreg Mach Monastery to teach for the fifth time.

A sword slips through her ribs with ease, and as she dies, she wonders, will this be the end this time? 

Surely, it will be over.

It isn’t.

Back to the forest once more, the cycle repeats again and again until she finally stops fighting it and reluctantly goes to Garreg Mach once more.

The fifth time Byleth makes it to Garreg Mach, she doesn’t want to have to teach at all. She knows they will not take no for an answer, so she says yes, and then quickly proceeds to pack her bags.

She tries to sneak away, but is caught.

She now understands why Father had said that “one does not run from the Church of Seiros.”

She is brought back in chains, a traitor, and Rhea comes to visit her in her cell. 

A clawed hand reaches for her heart, and she is back in the forest once again.

By the sixth time she makes it to Garreg Mach Monastery, she is tired. She goes back to the Golden Deer, and the outcome is the same as the last time. 

She is unhappy.

So, so unhappy.

She has tried everything.

This time, as Claude’s smile fades to the call of the void, she finally realises the one thing she has not tried when the ever so familiar question appears in front of her.

**Start New Game+?**

She’s tried everything, everything except saying no.

This time, she does.

And for the first time in a long time, she is at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I went feral and wrote all of this today. No regrets.


End file.
